This is a study of impaired elders and family members who provide care to them. The caregiving situation is viewed as a process in which stress and the effects of stress hve consequences for the mental health of family members, including the elder. The study posits that stress may result from the burden of caregiving; however, it may also be produced by the process in which families attempt to solve the problem of meeting the elder's assitance needs. One objective of this research is to test the efficacy of analyzing the caregiving process and concomitant stress effects using the theoretical framework of "family problem-solving effectiveness." A second objective is to identify over time the stress experienced by members of caregiving families and the related coping strategies they employ. These strategies may be utilized at the group level, referring to the interactive process in which the family unit engages in problem-solving, and at the individual level, referring to a particular member's use of problem-focused and/or emotion-focused strategies. The research utilizes a longitudinal design with a purposive sample of two caregiving and two matched comparison groups. The caregiving groups will consist of (1) impaired elders who live alone with nearby children and (2) impaired elders who live with a spouse and have nearby children. The two comparison groups will consist of "potential" primary caregivers matched to the actual primary caregivers in the caregiving groups. The comparison groups are used in order to disassociate the stress effects related to the caregiving problem from effects of stress "normatively" found in families. Bivariate and multivariate techniques will be used both in cross-sectional comparisons of the sample groups and in the study of change over time, along with Markov, log-linear, and other techniques appropriate to the analysis of panel data.